Yep, Sony’s Building an Android Tablet, Maybe by Summer

Sony will join the tablet fray by the end of the year, and possibly by this summer, with a device that runs Android 3.0 Honeycomb software.

Bloomberg relayed the news from the Nikkei newspaper, which cited Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer as saying the device will be ready by the end of the summer. Sony then told AV Watch that year-end is all the company is promising for now.

Officially, we don’t know much about the device, but Engadget has previously spilled the beans on a few details: It’ll reportedly have a 9.4 inch screen and an Nvidia Tegra 2 processor, with a curved back resembling the sketch pictured above. There may also be a clamshell-shaped device in the works with dual 5.5-inch touch screens.

For software, Sony will reportedly tweak Honeycomb with its own user interface modifications — to Google’s chagrin, perhaps — and load the tablet up with Qriocity services for music, videos and e-books. But the big draw could be Playstation Suite, the gaming package that Sony is bringing to smartphones and tablets this year. So far, Sony has only said that Suite will run original Playstation games, but if the library expands beyond those 15-year-old titles, Sony’s tablet could be a gaming powerhouse.